State House Grounds Still Closed Years After Patrick's Pledge to Open Them

More than three years after Gov. Deval Patrick said he'd make the State House grounds open to the public, the gates remain shut. 

The grounds were closed after Sept. 11, 2001, and Patrick has said he wants to make the State House's iconic statue of JFK, in particular, available once more. However, Boston Herald reporters were recently turned away from the plaza and told that it is open during the summer during official tours of the State House, the Herald reported. 

The governor seemed unaware that the grounds were never reopened. 

“Well, the JFK statue is accessible now, which is great,” he told Herald reporters Friday. “The rangers can take you out. You just have to ask them. It doesn’t have to be a tour, and that’s a great thing.”

Ultimately, however, Patrick put the decision of whether to open the grounds with the State House security team.

“What I feel doesn’t probably matter, what matters most is that the security experts on whom we rely feel ready and are ready because of what they view as a change of circumstances... I’ll have to ask them what they think,” he told the Herald.